Eyeless Woman
by Meelu the Bold
Summary: Muarim had never had even a single penny to give her, although sometimes he wished he did.


On the corner of the street that smelled vaguely like metal dust and bread and shit, there was a little beorc girl that he was very fond of. Her condition was very bad—she was blind and had no eyeballs. When Muarim had asked her, she said she had once had eyeballs, but a man had taken them out and she had not seen anything since she had turned seven. Muarim thought the girl to be fourteen now. Her name was inconsequential. He had never asked her, since she would have asked for his back, and he would have been unable to give anything to her. He was only called Muarim once, by his mother who shouted it to him when he had strayed too far. She was soundly beaten for it. Slaves didn't give themselves or their children names.

Muarim did not always see her on the corner begging for money or food, and he knew that she was always in danger of being killed or raped by another beggar or some other lowlife. She wore her brown-grey hair unevenly with her empty eye sockets for the world to see—a horror-show like her was safer than anyone else in terms of violation. Muarim had never had even a single penny to give her, although sometimes he wished he did.

Probably because she was blind she did not know he was a subhuman or a slave. She had a mean streak in her, and she would sometimes beat him away if he irritated her. Otherwise, she was tolerant of his presence. In those days, he was teetering in between adolescence and adulthood, long past the fuzzy-faced cuteness attributed to subhuman children but years before the daunting muscular frame afforded to adult male tigers. He saw the girl everyday for four years after being purchased by the nobleman, who sent him out regularly to carry heavy bags that smelled like dust back to the mansion.

He realized it might be foolish of him to consider this girl a friend and equal, since she was neither—she rarely had anything friendly to say and although she was blind and horrific, she was a beorc.

"You have a coin for me, stingy-ass?" she would say if he approached her in the day. Her hearing was very sharp and he was not so light on his feet after the nobleman had gored one on his sword while in a rage.

"No," he said lamely in return.

"Then git with you," she barked. He did not comply, usually. Muarim believed that she might like his company, even if he just stood with her in silence.

Of course, on the day of the massacre, she was gone.

**..0..**

Muarim moved very slowly, when he traveled on a large scale. He didn't know what compelled him to, since there was no sense in staying anywhere too long. Subhuman freemen were seldom welcomed anywhere except back in the employ of their former masters.

Muarim's master had been killed in the brief Phoenicisian retaliation. There was no where for him to go. Early on, he had some vague idea of finding the girl without eyeballs and taking care of her. That had been squelched when it had become clear that he'd never find her again—girls without eyeballs were not uncommon. It was typical for an evil beorc to take young homeless children and poke out their eyeballs and use them as beggars. Muarim had come across many such men.

He often tried to save the beggar children from their masters, but he was never met with gratitude. Once, a lowlife had shouted out, "Crazed beast! Subhuman!" and the little eyeless girl had run. She could not weep, but the sweat dripped from her face so that it streaked her cheeks and Muarim had to look away. There was always a wall that these people leaned against, a dank, dirty wall that they wept against. He always found these people in alleys and gutters, because those places were the places where subhumans walked freely.

Muarim could not count the years simply because he had no education whatsoever. There had been a slave of his master's that knew numbers and letters, but that slave had been the house accountant and inventory-taker—a cat that had grown clever in her advancing years. Muarim did not know what had happened to her.

Muarim had no possessions of his own. He worked menial jobs—lifting and pushing, mostly. Whatever money he had went towards food—and many times he had to live off of rats and other vermin that plagued Begnion's glamorously veneered cities.

It was one such job, lifting marble slabs to a beorc sculptor to work with. Muarim tended to shut out the conversations of his employers—but the man was standing right there, speaking of the decaying condition of Begnion to another beorc standing in the narrow street. The sculptor's warehouse was located behind them. Muarim caught snippets of the conversation as he loaded the slabs from the wagon in the wide main.

"You can't honestly say that," said the sculptor, angrily. "These people have by no fault of their own exploited and used. It's worse than slavery. Misaha spoke adamantly on the subject and yet her son does nothing!"

"He can't do anything," the sculptor's friend snorted. "Jargos isn't the apostle. The senate won't acknowledge him as anything but an intermediary until the next apostle is born. It's legal mumbo jumbo, but he cannot do anything but advocate the decisions of the senate which he agrees with."

"That's ridiculous," the sculptor muttered. He addressed Muarim briefly with an instruction before returning to his debate. "Be careful with that one—it's difficult to get them in that size. Look at the state of the city, Allen. Just yesterday, I saw a poor blind beggar woman without any eyes at all—she was wheedling coins from passersby alongside a prostitute and a young boy that struck her and stole her money."

"You look for such morbid things," his friend, Allen, mumbled. Muarim saw him take out his pipe to light it. He listened attentively to the next comments, although he did not hear anything more about the eyeless woman.

Muarim wanted to ask the sculptor where he had seen the woman, but could not find the courage to speak up to a man who was paying him. The beorc sculptor seemed to think he was already doing Muarim a great favor by paying him a little bit more than he was accustomed. Muarim was used to such behavior, almost as much as being scorned or cursed at. Beorc had their own concerns.

Muarim's concern was the woman.

He asked a few subhumans in their precious, seedy subhuman-only bar, but none of them was concerned with the beorc impoverished. All of them had given up—Muarim saw no further reason to interrogate beasts all sunken into their cups. He asked those who labored as he did. One had seen such a woman, but she was not where they had specified and that was a goose chase. Muarim found it painful to give up when he did, like there was a weight tied to his heart and it was slowly extracting the organ bit by bit from his broad chest.

**..0..**

Muarim's luck changed soon after the new incarnation of the apostle was born. Amidst the celebration in the streets, he saw his beorc girl without eyeballs staggering in the throngs in the street going home from the city cathedral after their prayer. He only caught a glimpse, but that was all he needed. Her hair was almost gone and she wore a sack over a dirty coat and dress that had many holes. His beorc girl had feet turned black with frost and a sack on her back that hung heavily across her thin shoulders.

He knew it was her. He could smell her, although his years in stinking, smoky, fecal-stained cities had dulled his senses somewhat. Muarim shoved through the crowd at ferocious speed to catch her, although out of fear he lagged behind as she entered an alley to collapse against a wall in a pile of filth. Muarim stopped breathing. He raced to her, reaching out to touch her gently.

She shrieked as he put his hand on her shoulder, swatting at his arm. His beorc girl, now stretched into a scraggly beorc woman.

"Keep away! Git away, you son of a bitch!" she screamed and then fell into a fit of hacking. Muarim did not know what to say.

"It's me," Muarim said dumbly. "I knew you in Crianna."

"I don't know you," she replied. "I never met you."

Muarim pulled his hand back. The eyeless woman groaned and her grip loosened on the dirty rags in her arms. Muarim saw the body of a dirty, unwashed infant. His beorc woman groaned and curled up as though she was in great pain. He touched her forehead and despite the snow, she was feverish to the touch. She did not scream again, but seemed to be resigned.

"Crianna," she whispered. Her grey hair was greasily plastered to her forehead and the gaping holes of her sockets. There was no mistaking the weakness in her voice. "The . . . the man without a penny. That . . . oh, Ashera. You were him. I know your voice."

"You remember," Muarim said. His woman without eyeballs struggled to sit upright. Her hands flailed in the air, trying to find his face. Muarim took her hand and guided it. She clung to him. "I've been looking for you."

"Why?" she asked. Muarim could not answer. Tthe sweat from her fevered brow dripped like tears from the bridge of her nose.

As though confirming something, Muarim took her hand and pressed it against his ear. "I want to take care of you."

The eyeless woman contorted her mouth and nose, her most expressive features, in confusion. She pulled away and lay back down on her back. "Git."

"Come with me," he said, reaching for her hand to pull her back up.

"I'd rather die," the eyeless woman said. She lay on her back in the garbage stained snow with her arms around nothing but the dirty, still infant.

"Come with me," he repeated.

"I'll die first, animal!" the beorc woman said vehemently with the last vestiges of air in her lungs. "I'll die before I take anything from something beneath me! I don't need subhuman charity!"

Muarim knelt next to her writhing body. The sweat poured from her and melted the snow. He held his hand under her chin as delicately as he could, but that only made her convulsions worse until she was retching air. When at last she was still, Muarim bowed his head over the body, feeling a deep sense of accusatory failure. When he took his hand from her, the dirty beorc infant opened his mouth to wail. The child looked so newly born that it could only be a day old at most.

"Come with me," he croaked finally, gently prying the child from the eyeless woman's arms. The infant was only as big as his palm, and his voice was weak. "I will take care of you, little one."

**..0..**


End file.
